DIGITAL.NEOSKOSMOS.COM THE WEEKEND NEOS KOSMOS | SATURDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2015 21 OPINION ‘All that was solid melts into thin air…’ VRASIDAS KARALIS A radical left-wing government had to be elected in Greece in order to understand the truth of this famous sentence from MarxEngels’ Communist Manifesto. They have become a living paradox that confuses and puzzles everybody. They were elected for the first time last January putting forward a radical anti-austerity agenda and now they are implementing the severest form of austerity. They stressed their left-wing credentials and formed government with the most reactionary fascist party in the country. They promised modernisation, separation of church and state, new state ideology, new forms of governance and they have become the most reactionary, anti-modern and anti-modernisation government we have seen in the last 40 years. Some of us of course had predicted this: they are all children of the corrupt political system that ruled over Greek society after World War II. What astonishes everybody is the degree and intensity of corruption. We usually expect left-wing politicians to be somehow idealistic or even utopian, but with SYRIZA in government the absolute rule of opportunism, the lust for power and the total commitment to manipulation have become the official ideologies of the state. Clientelism and nepotism are the main hallmarks of their rule: friends, relatives and sympathisers are all given public offices, on most occasions without transparent processes. No independent authority exists which can hold the government accountable: the very few institutions that were introduced during the last five years to bring a degree of checks and balances into the state have been undermined through malicious spin and institutionally abolished. In just a few months they have become the new masters of political manipulation so that even Andreas Papandreou cannot emulate them. They all belong to the regressive and authoritarian left, which certainly is not the left of the Communist Party. At least with the Communist Party, the class consciousness of its members establishes a clear and distinct agenda for social action. With SYRIZA we see the elitism of the high bourgeoisie taking over state power and using it for its own benefit. When Mr Filis denied the Pontian genocide he didn't do it out of the historian's duty to find the truth about the past. He did it out of the deeply-seated sense of entitlement that he knows more than the people who suffered what happened to them. From his opulent office he knows more about the catastrophe of Pontos than the Pontians themselves - and they better pay attention to him. He is the minister for education. There is a posh upmarket area in Athens, called Kolonaki, and a notorious café, called Filion, where all these wealthy, idle and permanently unemployed ideologues congregate all day long, indulging themselves in long disputations about the coming revolution, devouring enormous pastries, excellent cappuccino and where they develop the certainty that they know better than any other Greek the meaning of political governance. Most of them come from the northern suburbs of Athens, have studied at the poshest schools, especially the Moraites School, and they are convinced about the truth of their revolutionary struggle over any other truth. They want to save the Greeks from themselves because they are the people with a very important mission: to take power and govern on their behalf. Their pattern of action is distinct and above criticism: whenever someone criticises them they call them fascists and reactionaries, forgetting that at this very moment, they are in power together with a fascist party. When the indescribable Mr Varoufakis closed the banks, it never crossed his mind what that meant for the citizens, especially for the poor citizens of his country. He never relied on his pension or savings to survive, he never experienced financial insecurity and never lived through unemployment. For him, money was an abstract quality, a figure in his bank account and some numbers on his credit card. He had maids and servants to do the shopping for him, or to withdraw cash from his bank account. He never understood what money meant to the elderly and the dispossessed of the country - he always had money, through his superwealthy family and, from what we hear, from his incredibly enlightening truisms and platitudes for his highly-rewarded lectures and interviews. But it is chic to be wealthy and support the proletarians: the best lifestyle the haute bourgeoisie throughout the planet has propagated is the misery chic of the millionaire Marxists who have never relied on actual work to survive. As in the case of history with Mr Filis, the same happens with Mr Varoufakis, Stathakis, Tsakalotos, La- fazanis, Lapavitsas and tanti quanti. They are on a wellpaid, exciting safari among the working class: they are thrill-seekers and have lots of fun in the exotic suburbs of the proletarians who vote for them but see them only once before the elections. They know of Piraeus only because of its delicious taverns and its harbour where they board the ferry to take them to their most luxurious villas. They sell to these 'humble folks' the image of magnanimous princes who left their palaces to help the downtrodden and the dispossessed because they could not accept the injustices that their own class has inflicted upon them. With the right-wing ruling class at least you knew where you were standing and who was your opponent. But with these clever guys you don't - they know how to manipulate public conscience and establish what Marx again called camera obscura: the black is white and the white is black. If you criticise them you are against revolution and change, if you accept them, you better obey their infallible verdicts; in either case nobody asks for your opinion. They govern in your name and you had better get used to it. I hear that the left-wing Greek Australian high bourgeoisie has again invited Mr Varoufakis to explain his failure to fix the Greek economy and of course to justify it. With his usual rhetorical exuberance and meaningless witticisms he will blame others - the oligarchs, as he usually calls them - forgetting of course that he himself belongs to the oligarchic plutocracy of Greece. It is like Malcolm Turnbull talking on behalf of the Australian International Worker's party. As for his economic poli- cies, to my perception it will be the same as asking the jihadists to explain the archaeological value of the ruins of Palmyra. But he won't be deterred by such minor details. He will talk at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas because he has lived so dangerously moving from one charity function to another, from one well-paid lecture to another, that he knows everything about danger … It is really sad that such abuse of public political discourse is organised by people who in the 1980s gave promises for true change. Now from their glamorous positions within the political and cultural establishment they underestimate the intelligence of the hoi polloi, since they ceased being amongst them. Complacency and conformism have become their only mentality; they control the mainstream media and they are happy to project consumable images of revolutionary celebrities. Their corruption by absolute power is transmitted through the self-legitimation practices based on self-interest and self-congratulations. If one amongst them falls, which means to take responsibility, the domino effect will encompass all. Mr Varoufakis and his entourage represent the opportunistic and power-hungry political class that simply wants to rule and enjoy a privileged lifestyle, without any unwanted criticism. We all know that the left stands not only for redistribution of wealth but for redistribution of power. It is obvious that such opportunists use the former not to do anything about the latter; they continue the power structures of the right, appropriating its totalitarian, autocratic and opaque policies in order to govern unperturbed by suspending all opposition. Mr Varoufakis is only the tip of the iceberg. The big mass of the problem is wider and totally invisible. He represents the bureaucratic elite that rules through the structures of the conservative right by manipulating the expectations of the left. As I see, he is paid handsomely for being so clever … * Vrasidas Karalis is a pro- fessor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Sydney. Panagiotis Lafazanis Euclidis Tsakalotos Giorgos Stathakis Yanis Varoufakis